34-year-old Houston man attacked by crocodile and lives to tell about it

HOUSTON - Jonathon Schoeneman lives a life most people especially men would envy. He spends his workdays fishing in Cancun.

Jonathon appreciates the life he’s been given.

Probably much more following  his run-in with a crocodile on September the first.

Jonathon and a friend he’s known since childhood run a charter fishing business in Cancun.

He says he’s lived off and on in Mexico for several years and feels most at home in the water or at least close to it.

On September 1st the two men were spear fishing in a mangrove area. Jonathon says he had caught 8 schnook and was ready to call it a day when a crocodile attacked him.

“He bit me on the head first,” Jonathon said. “So I stuck my feet in the mud and just got a good solid grip and lifted myself up and I started squeezing his eyes.” 

Jonathon says he could hear his jaw bones crushing as the crocodile crushed his head. 

“And with this arm that’s starting to heal already I started punching his throat and sticking my fingers as hard as I could in his eye,” Jonathon said.

Jonathon credits his life-long friend and business partner with saving his life.

He rushed him to a Cancun Hospital where he underwent an 8-hour surgery and spent several days in an induced coma.

He also credits all the prayers and God for seeing him through the ordeal.

The attack won’t keep Jonathon from his one true love the ocean. 

Jonathon says he plans to return to his home in Cancun just as soon as he can